The Battle of the Week is a program designed to allow the users of Smogon to pick and choose which battles they want to see. If you've been unable to watch battles between top players because they choose to play on a deserted server or at the wrong times, this is your chance to watch a battle between the top players as it is played. If you still can't be on, you will still get to watch the battlers go head to head at a later date by watching it on the Smogon YouTube Channel, because all battles in this program will be recorded and uploaded there. Additionally, The Smog plans to deliver relevant, insightful, and interesting information about the battle and the battlers themselves.

How the Battle of the Week works(Move your mouse to reveal the content)How the Battle of the Week works (open)How the Battle of the Week works (close)

There will be three stages to the process, and they are as follows:

Stage 1: Every week, all users of Smogon will be permitted to submit nominations by posting up to three other Smogoners in the thread. Note that this means you cannot nominate yourself. To be eligible, the nominee must meet the following simple criteria:
- must have an account on Smogon that has been online sometime during the last week
- must not be on the [jump=listofpeople]List of users that don't want to or can't participate in the Battle of the Week[/jump]

If one of these conditions are not met but you think a nomination should be permitted, PM or otherwise contact me with reasons why.

Stage 2: The nominations will be counted, and the top ten most nominated players will be placed into a poll where everyone will be able to vote for any number of players in the pool. The player that receives the most votes after 24 hours will be one of the battlers in the battle of the week. Please don't vote for yourself.

Stage 3: There will then be a second and final poll to determine who that player will play against. Potential matchups will be listed in the format 'Winner vs A' through to 'Winner vs I', which means the other nine in the previous pool will all still be eligible to play against the winner of the first poll. The most popular matchup will then be publicly scheduled in the thread, and a time will be arranged, most likely on the weekend. Once again, please don't vote for yourself.

The battle will be completed, recorded, and reported about, and then the process will be repeated, with the program probably lasting around ten weeks. Should the Battle of the Week turn out to be a major success, it may continue on for a longer, yet to be determined length of time. If anyone has any suggestions for changes or themes or anything interesting that you can come up with, feel free to PM me here or on IRC.

[a]listofpeople[/a]List of users that don't want to or can't participate
Blame Game
Theorymon

To be added to this list, just send me a PM preferably entitled 'Not Participating in BotW' or something similar so I can be sure. Similarly, PM me if you want to be removed from the list.

I think it would be interesting to watch the more experienced battlers to face multiple people, just to get an idea of their consistency.

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It doesn't work like that. It'd be more like, 'I think it would be interesting to watch the more experienced battlers to face multiple people, just to get an idea of how lucky they can be." Because once you reach a certain degree in pokemon, it becomes more about team match up and less about skill. It doesn't matter how amazing you are. Line up 10 of the best battlers and smogon. Not one will go 10-0. Atticus went what 12-2? That's still 1 loss for every 6 wins and that isn't including some luck he may have had in the matches for the frontier.

It wouldn't be interesting at all seeing EW do 6 matches in a row lol. It's far more interesting if everyone gets a chance to show other users what they have. Some matches will be close, other matches will have team advantages. But making 6 very good teams wouldn't be fun either for the person who would be facing multiple opponents. Because if he uses the same team, you can simply counter team. So it's just even more pressure.

myself and panamaxis have agreed to a best of 3, OU style for the quarterfinals of the Superstar tournament...so if anyone want to see some potentially uber-quality games it'll be at 7-7:30 Tuesday EST.

But also, I'd like to say that I felt BoTw could've done much more with its potential.
Here were some ideas for fantasy matchups I would've liked to see that people should consider when voting:

goofball vs Loki - any format (maybe even 4 gen if they both got up for it), with two-time trophy winners and 2 of the best players of ALL-TIME going head-to-head. Now that's what I call a "Battle of the Week".

Earthworm vs Gouki and/or DarkLucario - best of 3, Smogon Tour style with UU, OU, and Ubers, a showdown between the winners of the Tour for bragging rights. What's not to like?

If possible, I'd go back farther into previous gens for some interesting matchups:
the 123-0 cloud vs Celia in his/her prime for GSC, Hipmonlee vs JMC for potentially the RBY #1 player, etc.

Everything is now in the OP, and the first season has officially come to a close. You can look forward to a final article in The Smog Issue 7, which will also be added to the OP. It has been a fun season and I hope everyone has enjoyed watching all of the battles! You should all be seeing another season sometime this year.

myself and panamaxis have agreed to a best of 3, OU style for the quarterfinals of the Superstar tournament...so if anyone want to see some potentially uber-quality games it'll be at 7-7:30 Tuesday EST.

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Id love for an American or a nocturnal European to record this and youtube it.

I've updated the OP with Smog Article #3, and I'll lock this thread after a few days. Any feedback or suggestions for the next season is definitely welcome and encouraged on any aspect of the BotW, including the articles and the program in general.